Sunday Essays

 

I just remembered that once Holiday Market starts I lose my Sunday day off for a month...Mondays just don't land the same as a day off. But I hope I will still find time to write. I need it. There's always a vast amount to write about that goes in my journals but I don't have to compose within any kind of structure there so this is about the most useful way I keep my skills in practice these days. I haven't felt interested in writing fiction in a long time, and maybe won't renew that interest. I've always been more drawn to the various types of narrative nonfiction and I never have enough time to explore it. 

My latest obsession is taking out trees like filberts that have volunteered in my yard and are demanding my control...I'm sawing them down. It's not hard, and I use hand tools, but there are some stumps like the big holly I took down a couple years ago that do kind of need a chainsaw. Lower priority. Yesterday I bought an elderberry which is exciting, for this one space that used to be dominated by the holly. 

Taking out the filberts so I can maintain my yard independently is fun for me, planning ahead for when I can't do it all myself. I love yardwork. It is the way I process my emotions...the air beckons me, the birds have learned to accept my wanderings through their feeding grounds, and the squirrels jump around in an amusing way when I scare them. Even burying the smelly dead possum was fun for me.

Yesterday, the last market on the Park Blocks this season, was lovely. My neighbor and I warmly said our appreciations to each other and gave gifts...we got a little wet but that didn't matter a lot. I will have to unpack everything and dry it out again, but I have to repack to have a lighter load for the next two weeks selling with the farmers, so that's fine. I'm hoping for decent weather over there so I don't have to take the popup and weights. Guess we'll see about that. 

The wonderful chats I had with many of my friends were sadly offset by a couple of disturbing ones...one of my friends told me the exact same things about six times, so her cognitive loss is getting much worse. I will refresh my knowledge about how to speak to people in that position with the highest respect for what they are experiencing. I think there are several good tactics to handle it so they don't get more confused or isolated. She's beyond the stage of helpful conversations, and now just needs support. I feel for her so much. This is one of the terrifying things about aging that we try hard to deny and pretend about. 

Reconnected in  a delightful way with one of my buddies from the old days. I told him this vivid dream I had about him decades ago, that in his basement was a river, a deep, living one with rocks and moss and everything, and I was envious. In my dream language at the time I identified his house as his relationship, and I was still searching for that kind of a relationship at the time...so we got to talking about our lives in detail and his was astonishing. He writes, too, so I'm looking forward to reading some of that. He's smart, fearless and strong...just what I need in friends right now. So that made me happy and that kind of thing is emblematic of the slower days at the market...we have time to be ourselves outside of our sales personas and connect.

Sales were low for me. I don't think most of Eugene realized it was our last week, as everyone is so focused on HM. I personally vastly prefer the Park Blocks markets to the indoor ones. My income indoors has stalled at the same level for the past four years, and although my outdoor income is down, I think that is because of things like early football games, poor promotions and of course, our current mismanagement which is just killing our market. We're looking at another fee increase to cover her overspending and the high costs to carry out her selfish goals. Every fee increase loses members. We feel that as a message that we don't matter. 

We need more people in our membership to wake up and be willing to get involved, and even with that it will take some years to reconstruct the type of thriving success we had in 2019. We even did well in 2020 and 2021 due to community support, but the lack of skills in our management has squandered that in so many ways. There is no disagreeing with the power structure, without retaliation and closing of access. Every time I write an email to the Board members I get punished by restriction of my access, and this last time I got bullied for writing this blog, by someone who hasn't read it, and says she never will. My email was about letting them know I had finished up the 2019 archives and wanted them all to take a look. She was kind of brutal, and I wrote her privately that it was wildly inappropriate and deeply disturbing to bring up my writing this in the context of my archiving, which I take seriously in a professional way. I've been a writer all my life, and in here for 15 years, so it was way out of context but she has learned that I am someone who only complains and is negative, something that has been constructed out of nothing to take away my joy and voice in the market community. Trashing the reputation of anyone who complains is an activity of quite a few of the leaders, who take the information dished out as truth, as they are seemingly unable to apply critical thinking to what they are told by the management. When criticism happens to them, they punch down.

I've not had an easy adjustment to this false portrayal of who I am, but her letter was kind of illuminating because she and I were friends...I even printed for her for a couple of years to help her get her business started, and even though it didn't go perfectly, she wouldn't have had as much success without my help. And she has asked for archival info many times and I've always given her very useful info. But some unknown people have told her things about me that she has not bothered to verify herself, so I let her know that it's acceptable that she doesn't want to know me as I am, but I won't be interacting with her after that putdown. That's likely to be inconvenient for her.

I also blocked several people on Facebook even though that is a bit meaningless, just a gesture. I'm on the verge of leaving FB anyway. A lot of the bullying is done on there, by people who consider themselves leaders, and by the regular bullies, and I'm not up for any more bullying, period.

The narcissist violated my boundaries yesterday when I let another staff member know I was not speaking to the narcissist. I don't think the other staff person knew what to do with that, so she probably just reported it more or less as I said it. The narcissist came right over and said she only had one thing to say, that she has never had a problem with me, and was ready if I wanted to talk, or if I wanted another staff member to mediate, and had this very sad innocent victim face. I mean, when someone just said they won't be speaking to you, how is it you go right to them and speak? Super controlling. 

And this is from the person who just last week trolled me with her costume as the Wicked Witch with a Flying Monkey (I hope it was expensive) and was delighted when it caught my attention and overheard chortling about it. She was joined by another "leader" who went as "The Board Chair's Wife" and also went out of her way to make sure I noticed. Trolling the members is bullying the members and it's just one of the items on my now four page list of unprofessional behaviors. Trolling is not leadership. 

Trying to gatekeep my free speech, deny my free access to the market leaders, those are not healthy actions from a manager, and in fact they're appalling. I know her enablers don't see that side of her, nor the other members of her mean gang, and until her control tactics are turned on them, most members don't even believe it is possible. It has taken some people several years to believe me. So much easier to trash the messenger. Fortunately I'm not the only messenger and others are much more brave than me.

And I'm human. I try to limit the abuse that I don't have room in my now short life for, but it isn't going away any time soon so I am also not allowing my joy and satisfaction to be destroyed by it. The truth will come out...facts don't lie. Eventually the archives will show it all, which I suppose is why they are all so determined to make me give up my work on them. I've been told more than once that the archives belong in the office so all members can access them, but before I started organizing it, no one could access them. So I will not let these temporary leaders steal what belongs to history. They can lie, misrepresent and try to control, but I will continue to simply tell the truth as I see it and let the facts speak for themselves. If I could finish the project today I would, even though no one to my knowledge has accessed any of the archives but one person who also tried to bully me to turn them over. When I refused and told him not to write about me, he did anyway, in an insulting way, so that isn't going to engage my cooperation.

I could hand them over, but it would be a small tragedy for the organization and for the future, and for the city as well. When I finish them I will. It is not my desire to keep any of it from anyone, as I think the warts and mistakes should also speak for themselves as history. I think it is a crime to try to change history to enable control and domination. I actually don't trust that they are that safe in the office. (Visualize a photo of the Mar a Lago bathroom with stacks of office boxes.)

Watching market follow the macrocosm down the aisles of authoritarianism is frightening, but we also have our inflatable frogs and if the narcissist is the Wicked Witch, it is good to remember she was destroyed by a common bucket of water. I guess she thinks I am Dorothy, but I have to keep in mind that I am actually Glinda in this warped scenario. I'm in this shiny bubble of kindness and truth, but when people come out for me, I just fly away in it. You can't take my glitter. I am shiny in my natural state. 

And now I will rake leaves and get that day off. I hope all is well in your world, or if not, you find the means to make it so. In times of crisis, community is what saves us. We know how to do good. We know how to be kind. We know how to rise above. We are naturally shiny.